2026 is most expensive election cycle

...26, becoming the most expensive election cycle ever. It's a new report by Ad Impact. It tracks spending on political ads. It shows that last week, spending on election ads reached 11.6 billion dollars. AdImpact reports this cycle spending broke the eight point nine billion dollar midterm spending record that was set four years ago and surpassed the eleven point two billion that was spent during the last presidential election. And to talk more about all of this, we're joined now by David McEwen, political science professor at Sonoma State. David, I'm eager to talk to you about it, but I'm glad to see you as always here on Mornings on 2. Good morning, Dave. Happy Election Day. It is Election Day, and I know you're happy because it keeps you busy, keeps us busy. But talk about all the money, the money that is spent and the new record that was spent in political ads. Yeah, I mean, the good news is election day is here and our mailboxes and airwaves will finally be less filled with these ads. The bad news is obviously the money. If you look at the overall spending, so you include the mail, you include what the campaigns themselves have done, and the ad impact study here on the- Total spending, it's over $15 billion. What that means is it's 50% higher than the last midterm. Most of that, obviously, television spending or spending related to streaming or social media, these types of things. And I use the AdImpact tool. It's a fantastic tool to monitor what's going on with spending. When you look at this, and that's because Television time or buying media time has doubled and tripled in rates. It's less expensive to buy national television commercials like on Monday Night Football with the 49ers to advertise a Texas Senate race than it is to buy in the 20 Texas media markets. So media markets have become incredibly expensive during this time. And part of that's been the overall spending, not just by candidates, but things like ballot measures, like no on 40, for example. For example, it raises the base rate. As it raises the base rate, what happens is the cost It costs candidates more. There's an earlier summer decision, a decision earlier this year by the U.S. Supreme Court that treats parties as candidates. That also raises the number. So here you have the court acting in a fashion that led to this kind of unintended spillover that's raised overall campaign prices. Parties are competing. Candidates are spending, and ballot measures are pushing up the overall numbers. All of this has created, if you will, kind of a tripartite discussion and movement of making things much more expensive for political campaigns. You talk about the cost to campaigns, to candidates, and all that. Comment real quickly on the cost to the American people, to us. Yeah, I mean, look, money is a necessary but not sufficient resource. And that means if you got a lot of money, you got a lot of speech and you can compete. What that does is raise the overall price. It doesn't just raise the overall dollars, however, it pushes out the timeline. Campaigns start earlier. More often, we're constantly running for office. Since we're constantly running for office, we're pretty good at it. The difficulty is actually governing or making the offices run. If you think about elections, elections are about distinction or difference, the difference between you, Dave, and this Dave. But governing is about consensus, directly opposite skill set. And that makes it much more difficult because the skills that bring you, if you will, the skills that brought you into office are not necessarily the skills that help Once in office and that divide between election year. All right, David, we're off and running. It is election day. Always good to see you. David McKeown, political science professor at Sonoma State. David, thank you for being with us on Mornings on 2. Pleasure to join you, Dave. Pace yourself today. I know. All right, Dave.